Christopher Hickey

Christopher Hickey

Alumni

Christopher Hickey’s journalism experience began by reviewing films for his high school newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia. Seeking some glamour in his life, he matriculated at UC Santa Barbara in Film and Media Studies. He joined their newspaper, the Daily Nexus, as a columnist on California, and was promoted to Assistant Opinion Editor the following year.

Christopher interned for the FX cable channel while in school, but decided after graduation to break into the video game industry instead, as a narrative designer. In his spare time, he continued to explore journalism by co-founding a video game news/reviews media network. He hosted podcasts, wrote headlines and taglines, went to E3, and made a YouTube video that compared the game Mirror’s Edge to a Jean-Luc Godard film. Thanks, Film Studies classes.

By 2010, however, Christopher felt the world was too interesting to focus solely on entertainment, and he decided to broaden his horizons a bit. He assisted with PR and social media for a democratic political campaign in Orange County, and later interned for Salon in San Francisco. He freelanced at El Cerrito Patch on the side, covering a variety of local issues.

This whole experience finally convinced him journalism was what he enjoyed the most, especially the multimedia side of things. What new ways can we deliver information to the reader? Is there life after paywalls? How can the Internet expand or develop the content from “traditional” media?

Christopher currently lives in Oakland. When he’s not obsessively reading The Dish, he enjoys his piano, a good book, a good meal, struggling to keep up with his Twitter feed, transportation, the environment, birdwatching, movies/TV/video games, and hiking. But not all at once.